this is. one post. by. foreign nations of escalating the syrian conflict by supplying all sides fighting in the main cities forces thousands to flee. the country with over two hundred thousand refugees. but barack obama pitching for reelection.

but has criticized the regional allies. over asia pacific territorial disputes. if barack obama can recapture the sense of hope that he brought to americans four years ago crosstalk just a sec. well . technology innovation all the latest developments around russia we've got the future covered. in. a low and welcome to cross talk i'm peter lavelle after

a lackluster even slightly bizarre republican convention nominating mitt romney for the presidency it is now the time for the democrats to reaffirm their faith in barack obama can obama reintroduced hope at his party's gathering and can he convince voters he is still the right guy for the job. to cross not the u.s. election i'm joined by rod taub in new york he's an american television news commentator and satirist in washington we have john kerry he is the founder of the ferry group and in charlotte we crossed to adam green he is co-founder of the progressive change campaign committee all right gentlemen crosstalk rules in effect i mean if you can jump in any time when john if i go to you first does barack obama deserve another four years in office now and i think that at this convention he's got to explain himself for having a failing presidency and largely having policies that not have not worked for the american people on employment above eight percent people kind of losing faith in

their government and just kind of a sense of hopelessness i think that barack obama needs to be fired ok and what do you think about that obama should be fired we'll talk about romney later well. ok for a survivor to say that our organization the progressive change campaign committee is one of the few organizations on the left that is actively run t.v. ads and other things pressuring barack obama so we are not one hundred percent behind every one of his policies but when it comes to barack obama versus mitt romney as a choice as a very famous comedian here named chris rock who says blaming. obama for not voting for mitt romney is like saying i don't like cancer. but i'm going to vote for a cancer essentially he has had to compromise with republicans who want to drag drag america in the wrong direction and then the question is do you want to go even farther in that wrong direction by supporting it even worse republican policies the bottom line is that every step of the way this president has been up structed by

republicans has had to compromise with republicans adopt unfortunately some bad republican ideas like massive tax cuts for the rich and now he's being blamed by republicans for failing how about this how about instead of blocking them they helped pass his policies and then because he had a real progressive agenda looks like ok rob jump in there where do you stand should obama be fired. yes i think that the big mistake a lot of people are making is they're talking too much about policy and not about politics and that's obama's big mistake he wants to be a policy maker he has never embraced or acknowledged or maybe not even understood what it means to be a politician he talks about leaving a legacy he talks about having a legacy like l.b.j. but l.b.j. was the consummate politician he worked both sides of the hill and so i've made the switch to romney just recently because i think romney does romney does have problems he's not the ideal choice for me but i think he's going to be more of

a politician i think obama is an idealogue and he's unwilling to compromise ok i want john do you think that romney's an idealogue. no if you look at his record as governor of massachusetts he actually was much more moderate than the rest of the republican party cut deals with the democrats running massachusetts he got things done he balanced the budget he cut taxes even passed a health care law that actually is very popular still imagine you're saying this is i mean this is a different romney then yes. well i think that he has to win the republican nomination which he's done at some point in time he's going to start attacking more of the center and i think he will be an effective executive and get things done as as rob said you have to be able to work on both sides of the aisle not just be an idealogue and unfortunately barack obama he got his progressive agenda through the first two years and congress and that was so unpopular we had an historic election in two thousand and ten where the american people basically decided stop and that's

enough to get the government off my back i think of that's why romney's going to be elected this november ok and him there's the discussion going on right now are you better off than you were four years ago is that a fair question to ask. it is a but is america better off than four years ago that's a fair question to ask when barack obama took office we were losing six hundred thousand jobs per month and now we are gaining jobs so you know that's that's perfectly fine a question to ask and he would win on that but we need to address all the stuff that was just said this is absolute revisionist history we have not passed a progressive agenda into law during the very first battle that barack obama had to fight was for a stimulus this is something that economists across the political spectrum agree needed to happen and progressive economists when i was vastly two trillion dollars stimulus to put it to put americans back to work and what republicans did was forced him to a lower the stimulus and be lowered up the stimulus with hundreds of millions of

dollars in ineffective tax cuts mostly for the wealthy and is that of a trillion dollars one point two trillion dollars in stimulus spending we had about four hundred thirty five billion dollars in stimulus spending which was not enough so thank you republicans for watering the idea thank you republicans for obstructing a true progressive agenda and now you look you say hey it failed well that's your fault on health care reform and i'm progressives one of these super popular where i'm going to shit on health care reform progress is one of these super popular public option allowing any american to buy into something like medicare which is one of the most popular programs in america republicans lockstep said no rock obama tried over and over again to compromise with them elongated the process by months and months to try to get people like chuck grassley from iowa and others on board and they voted no every single republican ok i mean in the end that we had to ditch that and i say i know public and i was fair enough but the idea of the robbing let me go to you i mean but do people care about that now because people vote now are

their circumstances how they feel now a lot of people don't think about history. well i want to say something i think it's the tip of her cation of the audacity of barack obama i think health care absolutely has to be reform and anybody that goes into emergency room anywhere knows that but at a time when we're in a horrible economic crisis when obama was elected one of the first things he has to ram down everybody's throat is this huge health care bill i think it was a mistake bill clinton told him that and he doesn't listen there's an arrogance with obama when adam was talking earlier about congress and both houses not working with president obama it's president obama's job as the leader of the free world as the present united states to make these things happen he can't dole out the blame to everybody else and i think that's what he does and he has he looks at himself and says i want to have a presidency like lyndon johnson well i bet the miami heat would like to have. you know as many wins and in the n.b.a.

championship as the boston celtics do in the one nine hundred sixty s. but nobody's going to win thirteen championships in a row we're in a different world we're in a different time of yes ok adam you want to i mean can you name one can you name one issue one big issue that republicans have actually been willing to compromise with the president on rob you want to say you want to feel that i think that we could have yes i think we could have had a deal. numerous situations and i think obama doled it all off to to read and palosi who are are if you talk about ideologues and intractable politicians people were expecting republicans were expecting to deal with the president the president's made it clear he doesn't like the day in day out machinations of washington and his aides will tell you this people have this is what he's all about he won't take off more than two dinners a week he won't miss them with his daughters i have two kids i like to spend time with my kids but i'm not the president of the united states i just don't think he's been effective that way and i think he had to make something bipartisan happen and

he didn't the republicans were difficult there's no doubt but he walked in there as a washington outsider and instead of say hey i'm here to bring us together and unite us he made he just made a divisive split if i'm going to john you know john i've lived abroad for fifteen years so i'm watching looking from the outside in and i look at obama's presidency he just looks like a campaigner that's all he does his campaign he doesn't govern well camp a campaigner in a golfer he's golf according to mark knoller one hundred four times and apparently his golf game is getting much better and that's all he does he campaigns use these he's campaign more than any other president history has done more campaign events than any president history and he's golf more than any president history and you know that's the fact of our that's why he's largely ineffective and the robs point there are several moments where the president could have worked with the republicans and decided not to and on one big issue republicans would have been happy to find compromise with this president that's entirely reform they decided

that the white house decided they did not want any kind of entitlement reform because they don't care that we're going bankrupt which explains in large part why we're here at sixteen trillion dollars in debt which is sixteen trillion dollars in the method middle of the democratic convention which all together appropriate because they want to a spending spree and the problem is the spending spree is is not abated it's getting worse and the american people are sick and tired of a country is really nearing bankruptcy ok and him how do you feel i mean if romney wins do you think policies will change that much like when we deal with the deficit and things like that. if if you win yes policies will change dramatically in the wrong direction because the republican policy in congress republicans in congress is if there is a democratic president absolutely do not compromise absolutely hurt the economy and damage americans live so much that they elect a republican president and then when a republican president is in will pass whatever they want and democrats who are

much more open to compromise often times go along with a republican president that i'm not a functioning about nonsense and honestly that the discussion that we've had a last minute or two has been absurd the idea in the first person when i asked for one policy that republicans have been willing to compromise on do not name a policy i believe or quote was there could have been a deal in town and why it and then you said that he told it off to policy and read that makes no sense. he personally engaged in conversations with john boehner on the debt related policies john boehner was the one that couldn't find any personally backed away real and yes and yes and yes they happened to golf together so if you're blaming him for golfing enabling him for not being bipartisan i guess you're on both sides of that of that debate john you want more of it when you are almost sure to go to break your journey you want to react to that. the start bargaining and he didn't bargain specially the beginning with the stimulus package the fact the matter is that the president wanted no republican input on the stimulus package which is why the stimulus package was a complete disaster and one of the most unpopular policies passed by this president

the fact that this is a failing president to rouse point he's a failing president because he has not tried to listen to both sides he has not tried to steer towards the middle and he sees we've got gridlock as as a result ok gentlemen we're going to go to a short break and after that show break we'll continue our discussion on obama's convention stay. in his first t.v. interview since his inauguration. i'm aware of the pussy riot case but i'm not getting involved in any way. bloody or putin speaks exclusively to our t.v.

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. you were talking about obama's pitch. perfect and you can. still play. ok i've got to go back to rob in new york how much is this campaign really about anxiety not about democrats and republicans but anxiety about the future. it's a it's about anxiety to a tremendous extreme because the big question are we better off than we were four years ago that was if this to david axelrod yesterday and he said well auto workers are what we're talking about the country as a whole and it's also been a very mercurial economy where we good one day in the stock market the next day it crashes one hundred points there's there's really no even keel here and people are concerned i i want to address what we're talking about a little bit before which is a word unsustainable i think it's

a big problem with with the democratic party they want to do all these things but they have all these programs that are literally unsustainable and that's where my concern comes in president obama says he's going to solve that by increasing taxes on the rich which would bring in another eighty one billion dollars which doesn't touch our sixteen trillion dollar deficit and it does nothing more than create a class warfare my big issue also is i don't want to pay more money to the government because i think it's run so horribly and efficiently and effectively that it's like flushing my money down the toilet john i mean it given all the anxiety obama still leads in the polls i mean in this kind of environment this kind of economy issue the republican nominee should be having a walk in the park right now why isn't this the case. well he's not tied in the polls and right now obama's ratings are around forty six percent and you know the fact of matter is that that's not going to get him reelected in a two person race the american people don't know mitt romney right now they don't

know who he is they've heard a lot from the ads from the obama campaign lot of unflattering ads and so he that the republican convention was a the first step to trying to introduce mitt romney and after that they've got to go on a campaign to let the who let the people know who mitt romney is and it's not that i usually keep in mind that ronald reagan was behind jimmy carter at this point in the election so there's plenty of time for mitt romney to make up ground and ultimately the american people are going to side do they like where this country is going under a rock obama or do they want a real change in direction and you know adam thinks we should continue to go on the same direction but i think most americans will conclude that we need a change at the top you know adam likability is a very important issue in this campaign and you know i've asked my colleagues here on cross talk to look at both candidates and all of them say obama looks nicer he seems more likable i think a lot of people react that way that's one advantage obama has. absolutely

someone said before that people don't really know mitt romney they do and he reminds them of the of the boss who fired their father and he's a kind of a corporate robot who is kind of the worst of you know kind of a crony capitalist culture that we're dealing with now whereas barack obama is being criticized for having dinner twice a week with his daughters which is probably why some of the guests on the show might be unlikable and also why barack obama is likable you know on the issue of the day there are two major causes of america's debt one is completely unnecessary wars they cost trillions and trillions of dollars of taxpayer money the other is crazy tax cuts for the rich and giant corporations if we eliminate those two things we would have almost no debt right now and yet we have mitt romney just last week saber rattling against russia randomly re invoking the rhetoric from the cold war and almost writing that we're going to work russia that makes no sense and if we want to keep our taxes down here maybe we shouldn't eclair war and russia has efforts not ok what do you think about that i mean i must admit you know mitt

romney distracts me as not being in touch. i think first of all i'm wildly likable and it's like getting a job as a traveling salesman and you say except a job for a big salary and then you say you know i really don't like planes in airports really bother me so i'm not going to travel at all oh i'll have a factotum take care of that for me one other thing where the i want to touch on about polls i know on the i'm almost a question behind but i do both print and i vote in television and and. there's a big difference between you and your polls somebody on television or on the phone because they don't want to be honest i do a lot of radio and i walk around with my reporter's notebook and i walk up to people on the street and cabs on buses and i think there's a bit of a silent minority out there being a republican is wildly on the hip and uncool and so people don't want to probably going to vote for romney i had a tough time coming to that. to that truth but there are

a lot of people that think that because they're afraid and because the album is wildly charming but i also find them to be terribly arrogant guy as mayor michael bloomberg called the most arrogant man he's ever met ok john is this really a campaign also i'm trying to look at the different ways to look at this campaign is it just to vote against somebody time voting for someone because there's a lot of democrats that are disappointed disappointed with obama. well i think it's a vote for which way you want the future to go and in many ways if you decide that you the president is taking us in the wrong direction you're going to vote against him i think the polls bear that out that a majority of people who are supporting mitt romney don't particularly love mitt romney but they desperately want to change direction so they're going to vote against president obama. and that's kind of not not that unusual in campaigns where people vote against an incumbent rather than vote for the challenger that being said part of mitt romney's challenge is how do i get people to feel more

comfortable with where i'm taking this country and i think that you know people understand that romney has some real experience running companies and some real experience in dealing with this economy and creating jobs and creating wealth which you know unlike adam most americans actually like wealth creation they actually like when people make money they actually like it when when there's more money in the economy and they don't really love redistribution of wealth and they don't like class warfare so that's why they're going to i think the majority of people derives point the more the silent majority are going to want to change direction and they're going to put their faith in someone who understands how to run an economy not someone who has experience in running a car and i count me by barack obama ok and i'm in i think a lot of people when talking about distribution of wealth the wealthy have just got wealthier under bush and obama absolutely. yeah yeah i mean let's make no mistake about it we are living in a mayor and america with class warfare there's been

a war declared on the middle class and as the people on this show propose cutting social security cutting medicare and then cutting taxes on the wealthy that is reduced to redistribution of wealth in the wrong direction and that is what the whole republican party platform stands for it's absurd the idea that you know there's a silent majority on the eighty percent like you would receive on cut social security are lying is ridiculous people want social security and we don't need to cut it in order to solve the deficit mess that's the bottom line and the one last thing i really need to hit this core point home you know if there is a race in the finish line of this race is employment for millions of americans and barack obama is tasked with running this race republican the essential you are kneecapping him there hitting his legs and then saying you haven't reached the finish line we have not passed a progressive is and in this country the parts of the stimulus that are most unpopular with a republican parts the parts of the health care plan which was most unpopular was the individual mandate which was a heritage foundation right wing think tank idea so how about we let you know i'm

an actual progressive agenda passed and then you can judge the direction this country stop loading up on this democratic president's policies with really bad right wing ideas ok rob you want to jump in there was a lot said they're going to drop yes i'm i'm not talking i'm not for cutting i am for reforming and that what disturbs you a president obama is i've never heard him utter the word reform he doesn't want to reform we have to reform medicaid we have to root for medicare we have to reform social security and medicare came about with president johnson in one thousand nine hundred sixty six there were no x. rays there were no m.r.i. zero no heart bypasses people died earlier there it's unsustainable we don't have if we just combine social security medicare and our defense budget it grows exponentially in ten years it will comprise one hundred percent of what's taxed on people that's. there's not going to be room for anything else so it has to be reformed i wrote an article about this in the huffington post

a couple of months ago when i got there there are democrats that responded to me like i was crazy like there's nothing wrong with medicare we can just keep funding it where's the money going to come from ok john do you i sense you are bristling there john you want to jump in there. well you know i rob is absolutely right if we do not do something to solve the entire problem everybody almost everybody takes a look at at these entitlement programs understands that if we don't do something they will take up one hundred percent of our budget and then we don't have money to pay for defense we don't have money to pay for education we don't have any discussion money to pay for anything else and just increasing taxes on the one percent who already paid sixty percent of the taxes in this country is nonsense so what we need to do is we need a percent here in the spending problem. no i say actually i think they well it does as you top ten percent pay seventy five percent of the tax in this country and if we don't do something about curing the spending problem which is now

a twenty five percent of g.d.p. we're going to be bankrupt and it's a spending problem it's not a tax problem and you know there's not a there's not a solution out there that does not require some less spending especially entitlements and that that is the way to our fiscal future not just letting the programs grow wild ok a lot of these programs are popular with everybody that's a different program and tell me about the democrats i mean there's not as much enthusiasm for the president this time round. there's not wait let me come back to point a second just to hit this entire one point real quick ok right now social security has a multiple two trillion dollar surplus it's pretty much conventional wisdom in d.c. that social security is fine the question is medicare and with medicare what barack obama did whether you like it or not what he got about seven hundred billion dollars of fraud and waste out of the medicare system that is quote unquote reform no it did not touch benefits one penny all it did was say to corporations essentially we're ripping off taxpayers and ripping off senior citizens you can no

longer do that and by doing that we will save taxpayers seven hundred billion dollars republicans like mitt romney are opposing that reform but they actually want to cut benefits there's a big difference so we can find some common sense reform and get rid of some of corporate waste in our system but that doesn't mean hurting pensioners and people like that on democrats i mean honestly again our organization has about a million members a bold progressive and a lot of our members you know aren't as enthusiastic this time around as you were four years ago and part of the problem is that this president you know has compromise too much with republicans even when eighty percent of the people are on his side you know that he would cut a bad deal and now we have republicans obviously just attacking him i mean it's bad faith after bad faith and what we need from a second term is a president who draws a line in the sand and says i will raise taxes on the rich i will not cut benefits for social security medicare other seniors already gentlemen when i run out of time when picking on what he will convene again to continue this many thanks to my guest

today in new york washington and in charlotte and thanks to our viewers for watching us here as you see unix i mean remember cross-country. you. want. spanning continents. and oceans. of the earth in our the city of. the russian apec summit on our two.

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